“Planyard is exactly what I’m after as a business owner: a good-value system that keeps everything in one place, saves me money and makes sure I’m not losing any money on projects. As a businessman, that’s a no-brainer.” - Lee from E&N Group
E&N Group is a London-based principal contractor delivering internal fit-outs, heritage refurbishments, and retrofit projects. With jobs typically running up to £500,000 and lasting three to four months, the business has grown rapidly since launch.
What started as a lean team - Lee Covington as owner, one part-time QS, and an external accountancy partner - quickly became an operation that exceeded their turnover forecasts by 60% and needed a proper financial process to keep pace.
“We’re a principal contracting business taking on whole projects and subbing out each section. At the moment our jobs go up to about half a million and typically run three to four months.”
Before Planyard: spreadsheets, emails, and a process that couldn’t scale
Like many contractors, E&N’s financial control relied on email threads, spreadsheets and manual PO recording. Subcontractors sent valuations as PDFs, invoices came in irregularly, and job costing depended on someone updating Excel at the right moment. As turnover accelerated from £0 to around £2.5m in the first year, Lee could see the cracks forming.
“With a part-time QS, everything kept slipping back onto my desk - valuations, invoices, spreadsheets, job sheets. I was losing hours every day just trying to keep the wheels turning.”
Doubling turnover each year was the plan, but Lee also knew you can’t wait until you’re a £7–10m contractor to sort out your processes. Once you’re that size, it’s too late to rip out spreadsheets and email chains. The workload was already piling up, and the old workflow simply wasn’t built for the growth he was targeting.
Choosing Planyard: one clean workflow for everything
Once it was clear the manual setup wouldn’t survive another jump in turnover, Lee decided to fix the process early rather than wait for a crisis. He asked his QS to research systems that could handle valuations, POs, invoices and job costing in one place, and to avoid anything that felt like a complex finance platform no one could understand.
Over a few weeks, the QS compared several tools, looked at pricing, and came back with a clear recommendation: Planyard was the only one that did what they needed without overcomplicating things.
“My QS looked into a few companies, compared the costs, and said this was the best product. We trialled it for two weeks and then just went live with our first project.”
What made Planyard stand out wasn’t flashy features, but that both Lee and the QS could instantly follow what was happening. Other systems felt like heavy ERPs where everything seemed confusing. Even just uploading something. Planyard, by contrast, was simple enough that even less tech-savvy subcontractors could submit valuations and invoices on day one.
“What struck us was how easy it was. If it were hard for me to use, how can I expect my QSs or subbies to use it? With Planyard you just click send valuation, upload invoice, apply percentages to your section - it just works.”
Implementation: done in minutes, fully flowing once Xero was mapped
E&N started with a two-week trial and moved a live project straight into Planyard. They backfilled a few existing job orders and costs to test the flow, and it worked without much effort. The core workflow made sense immediately for Lee, the QS and the subcontractors.
“It’s a very easy-to-use, contractor-friendly system that most people can pick up and use pretty much straight away.”
The only setup work that really took time was aligning Planyard with the accountants’ structure in Xero - agreeing on how job numbers should flow and how invoices should land in the payment schedule. Once the accountants had mapped that, it turned into a single, clean pipeline from valuation to payment run.
“We had to get our accountant on board and interface it with Xero, so invoices hit the right job number. Now an invoice gets uploaded in Planyard, I sign it off, and it drops into my Xero payment schedule in three or four weeks - it’s perfect.”
Day-to-day: one simple workflow everyone actually uses
Planyard now sends each subcontractor a link to their package and almost all of them submit the valuations like that. They click a link in the email, tick through the line items they priced, enter their percentage progress and upload their invoices. Valuations land structured and ready to review instead of as random PDFs in someone’s inbox. The QS can see exactly what’s been claimed, where, and why - without rebuilding anything in Excel.
“One of my subbies is not very tech literate and English isn’t his first language, and he still nailed it first time.”
Because every subcontract, PO and valuation runs through Planyard, all spend is tied to a job number from the outset. Orders can’t be raised without a PO, valuations are linked to the exact scope, and costs to date on each heading are visible in real time. When Lee checks a job, he’s looking at one source of truth rather than trying to piece it together from emails and spreadsheets.
“Everything has a PO linked to a job number. No one does a job without a purchase order, so when I look at margin I know it’s the true margin.”
Before Planyard, Lee and his wife were effectively doing 1.5 full-time jobs worth of admin - logging invoices, chasing valuations, updating job sheets, and trying to maintain a clear picture of costs. Now that the QS and accountants run everything inside Planyard, the process just flows. Lee only steps in to approve payments and glance at summaries instead of spending hours each day pushing paper.
“At the very beginning my wife did all that finance stuff - she doesn’t need to do it anymore. All I do is approve payments on Xero and check the margins on Planyard.”
On the QS side, Planyard has stripped out a lot of repetitive work. There’s far less time wasted rebuilding spreadsheets, re-checking formulas or reconciling numbers from three different places. Instead of acting like a very expensive data-entry machine, a QS can actually focus on what they’re good at - managing risk, value and the commercial health of each job.
“For a QS, it’s easily half their time. If you’re paying around seventy grand a year, half of that you’re saving or making them twice as efficient.”
The results: real margins and owner peace of mind
By running all subcontracts, valuations, POs and invoices through Planyard, E&N now sees real project margins in real time. Nothing slips through the cracks, nothing waits in an inbox to be keyed in later, and every job is fully costed as it moves. When Lee looks at a project report, he’s looking at one consistent dataset rather than a best guess assembled from emails and spreadsheets.
“When you look at your margin without using Planyard, you might think you’re making 21%. But are you really if things have been missed and you can’t see them? Planyard lets you see a true margin all the time.”
All of that translates directly into hard savings. Planyard has removed roughly 1.5 full-time roles worth of owner/admin work and freed up around half a QS in productivity.
“It’s at least a full-time job’s worth of work saved. And it means when I look at the numbers, I know they’re right - nothing’s gone missing.”
Approvals are quicker, arguments are rarer, and subcontractors get paid through a calm, predictable process. The accountants just open Xero, see clean data in the right place, and don’t have to chase anyone asking, “What is this bill and where does it go?”
Built to double year after year
Lee’s ambition is to double turnover every year. Doing that with spreadsheets and PDFs would mean hiring extra admin staff and trying to rebuild the whole process while the business is already under pressure. With Planyard in place, growth looks very different: he can focus on hiring QSs and project staff, because the commercial workflow is already standardised and ready to scale.
“I can organically grow and focus on getting business rather than sorting my finances out, which is exactly what should be happening.”
A new QS can be fully operational on a live project in three to four weeks because the process is consistent, repeatable and easy to follow. A qualified QS can open Planyard on their first day and immediately understand what’s going on - they’re not fighting the system, just learning how E&N runs its jobs.
“As long as they’re a qualified QS, they’ll understand what’s going on straight away. I’d expect them to be up and running on a live project in three to four weeks.”
Takeaway for UK construction business owners
From Lee’s perspective, Planyard is the difference between running a growing business with confidence and constantly trying to hold everything together manually. It replaces a fragile mix of spreadsheets, email threads and guesswork with one clean, user-friendly workflow that everyone can follow.
It saves full-time salaries.
It protects margin.
It makes growth sustainable.
It lets you double turnover without doubling the back office.
And it gives owners a financial system they can actually trust.
“It’s cost-effective, it’s efficient, and it just makes everything easier. You should get it because it’s simply a better way to run the business.”